


but i know the nature of you

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Humor, M/M, geralt says hm, give istredd more fics i stg, give renfri more fics i stg, i say gay rights, istredd says elf rights, jaskier says slut rights, not as in 'the four humors' but maybe we got those too, yennefer has agency and complexity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24290401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: “Pity cannot coexist with love,” Yennefer tells him. “They run in the same channel. Nobody, no matter how open-hearted, has space for both.” She waits for Geralt to contradict her. He does not.Whatever warmth or tenderness she felt in her heart has calcified again. “I want you to promise me one thing, Witcher. If you ever start to pity me, leave.”ORFive characters, five vignettes, all linked together by ideas of rest and heartache.ORWhy someone on the same precipice as you can't pull you back from the edge.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Istredd/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 16
Kudos: 31





	but i know the nature of you

The blood from her heart pounds through her fingers and it says kill, kill, _kill_ them all, take your sword and look into their _eyes_ as you hack at them, watch them jerk and spurt blood and fall down choking. They have never given her anything but hatred. They declared her a monster and hunted her like one, yet were surprised when she behaved like one. They looked upon her with disgust, trod on her, backhanded her, _violated_ her, splintered her pride and her person piece by piece, giving her no choice but to grow back beastly. She can kill an entire town. She’s strong enough.

She is sane. She is, in her own mind, reasonable.

She is just not merciful.

She was born under the Black Sun. She has an altered soul.

It means, among other things, Princess Renfri of Creyden cannot dream.

She sleeps with her eyes open like a snake, seeing nothing. Night after night in the dark woods killing, stalking men like a threat from a storybook, like a shtriga, like a shrike. Vindication and victory are twin temptations, and she wears them gutted and gory like the golden crown she’s owed.

There are legends of her that spiral far beyond the facts. If the children knew the truth, they wouldn’t cry at night for fear of her. They’d _scream_.

Renfri would very gladly set her story straight. She’d answer any questions put to her, would give matter-of-fact and thoughtful answers right against the interviewer’s lips, once she’d neatly—but very slowly—removed them from his face. 

Revenge is a beautiful thing. It is a fire that never desiccates to ash.

*

Geralt is lying down on his back, flat on the ground which is horrendously rocky and root-y even through the stitched panels of Jaskier’s doublet (tailor-made), and yet Geralt braves it in nothing but his loose black shirt, untied and falling open at the base of his neck. His eyes are closed and his breathing is metred, but his body is still far too taut for him to be relaxed.

“Sleepless night?” Jaskier asks, flipping sideways on his blankets and propping his head up on his hand.

Geralt doesn’t stir. “Especially now that you’re talking.”

Geralt’s voice is incredibly, gratingly low. It looks, to Jaskier’s musician’s brain, like no other voice. While most voices are brown, edging into gold in their upper registers, Geralt’s is a grey metallic slice. Other voices register as notes. Geralt’s doesn’t. It’s more like… percussion. 

It’s fitting for him. And yet it’s still… Jaskier searches for the word, but once he lands on it, he doesn’t like it. It barely rhymes with anything, for one. _Unnatural._

Geralt walks through the world like an immutable fact. It makes Jaskier nervous. And when he gets nervous, he prances.

Although, in fairness, Jaskier always prances.

It makes him prance more. He orbits Geralt like the sun orbits the earth, or whichever way it goes, since people have lately been debating that sort of thing. They _have_ been debating that sort of thing, and it’s silly. The sun goes around the earth, _obviously_. Anyone can tell that it circles the earth in the sky, causing day when it’s above the earth and night when it’s below it. _Duh._

“Some people are idiots,” Jaskier reflects aloud. “Next thing you know, they’ll be saying the earth is round.”

Geralt opens his eyes and stares at him.

“Whaaat?”

Silence again.

Jaskier gets bored. He scoots closer to Geralt by a noticeable fraction. Geralt, with that superb hearing of his, _probably_ notices. He doesn’t suddenly and dramatically insist that Jaskier take his bedroll elsewhere, which Jaskier takes as a positive sign.

It’s not unheard of, Jaskier reflects, for Witchers to sleep with bards. It _is_ unheard of for Witchers to sleep with _male_ bards, but, of course, if they were sleeping with male bards they wouldn’t exactly be _promoting_ the fact, which makes Jaskier think his—quest—isn’t entirely a lost cause. 

Music is an aphrodisiac, after all. Or maybe that’s oysters…

Whatever.

He’s about to move closer again when he remembers Yennefer of Vengerberg.

_Fuck._

When open, Geralt’s eyes are flat gold, not luminous, not even reflective. They’re stoic, invariable, like coins. And Yennefer’s eyes are purple, deceptively calm and equally unreadable. Her hair is black; his hair is white. Jaskier has an eye, as well as an ear, for harmony. Geralt and Yennefer balance. And Jaskier has brown eyes and really no markedly attractive physical features, and no tragic backstory, and no survival skills.

And yet Geralt keeps him on. To patch him up? Well, it’s certainly not to serenade him.

Those gold eyes...

Jaskier has always felt he sees better with his eyes closed, because then his ears are wide open.

 _Hmm_ , he ponders. Perhaps that’s why he has no survival skills.

He does have the tendency to go leaning into ditches.

Thinking all that, he’s silent for an uncharacteristically long chunk of time, and Geralt’s face registers almost imperceptible relief.

Then.

“Sooooo,” Jaskier starts off, with less caution than he’d use if he were smart. “Yennefer?”

Geralt doesn’t move. “What about her?”

“You’re… seeing her?”

“Yes.”

“I bet it’s very,” Jaskier moves his fingers in some suggestive but biologically unlikely interlocking ways. “Hot?”

“Hm.”

“Is this a… frequent thing, or..?”

“Frequent enough.”

“So you show up and—do you even talk beforehand? Or just sort of start…” he does more of the fidgety hand gestures.

“Hm.”

“I mean, my real question is—sure you got the simmering, hot-enough-to-fry-a-selkimore tension, the passion that turns nights into burning flickering flares and flames of the epitomes of ecstasies—”

“Spare me the poetics, Jaskier.”

“—And sure you have the magic, the compatible tragic backstories, the equal talent for murder, let’s face it, and—”

“Jaskier,” says Geralt, testily now. “What’s your point.”

“My point is,” Jaskier throws his hands up into the air, “Are you even friends?!”

The question lingers in the air between them, growing in importance, cavorting against the sonorous backdrop of crickets and frogs and older, larger, wilder things that would love to eat Geralt for breakfast, Roach for lunch, and Jaskier for a light midafternoon snack.

Geralt sighs heavily. “Get some sleep, Jaskier,” he orders.

Jaskier lapses back into defeated silence. 

Minutes pass. He almost drifts off.

It’s too fucking _cold_. He curls up around himself and tries his best to ignore the frightening soundscape. The threats of the woods, the distant howls, the susurration of leaves, slowly start to form the backdrop of a song. Fatigued now, he begins the slow shifting toward sleep, which for him is characterised by the creating and dismantling of chords, colours, structures, octaves, syncopated melodies, general AND specific ‘sick beats,’ and some truly phenomenal rhymes, such as “procreation, defenestration, and pontification in place of actual communication,” saved for use should he ever get enough, er… insider’s knowledge… to compose a ballad about the sexual exploits of the great White Wolf.

Minutes stretch near an hour, and he almost drifts off… 

“Jaskier,” Geralt says.

“Hmm?”

Geralt says the following words as if they’ve been weighing heavily on his mind. “‘Valley of plenty’ and ‘friend of humanity’ don’t even rhyme.”

Jaskier resists the urge to chuck his lute at the Witcher’s face.

*

“Do you pray?” Geralt asks.

Yennefer rolls over in bed and resists the urge to violently herniate one of his upper spinal disks. “Please tell me,” she says, “You aren’t one of the men who gets philosophical after sex.”

“Hm,” Geralt grunts.

“You’re a master of elocution.”

“Hm.”

Yennefer flips herself over, stares at the ceiling. She enjoys Geralt’s presence next to her, the strained pull of the mattress as it sags over to one side. That’s where they stay afterward for a while; side by side, no longer touching. The sweat on their brows, their post-coital heat, their slow physical unclenching, unified. Just the fact that their breath returns to an almost-trusting normal means they can unwind—at least somewhat—in each others’ presence.

“I used to,” she says after a moment. It’s not a large admission, really. She rests her hands on her stomach, then moves one hand to her jaw. “But I always started with ‘Dear Gods, I’m _sorry_.” She drops her hands. “So I stopped.”

“Hm.”

Yennefer scoffs. Then she sobers. She reaches over and, as if touching something ancient, traces the lines of Geralt’s face with her finger. His cheek twitches under her ministrations. “...Do you?”

Geralt, shock of shocks, actually replies. “Who to?”

“Witchers don’t have Gods, then.”

He takes her hand from his face and covers it with his own. “We don’t have much.”

“Family? Friends?”

He mirrors her small mirth. “No friends, either.”

“What am I, then?”

He almost smiles. “What are you, Yennefer.”

“I don’t love you.”

He’s amused by that. “Whom do you, then?”

“Love?” Yennefer’s face sours; she turns away slightly. “Nobody. Istredd. Nobody. Myself. I don’t know.”

“You’re very fond of absolutes,” Geralt observes.

Yennefer turns on him, kicking away the bedsheets. “What do you mean?”

Geralt seems unperturbed by her sudden anger. “You want everything and love nobody,” he says neutrally. 

“Are you _mimicking_ me?”

“Not intentionally.”

Yennefer looks on him with something halfway between a stare and a glare. She pulls her hand back deliberately. 

Geralt rumbles out a guess: “You want to care for someone.”

Yennefer blinks. “You’ll be gone by morning,” she reminds the Witcher, her tone making it clear the conversation is over.

A pause. Then: “I can stay.”

“I want you to be gone by morning. This time.”

“Every castle has a foundation,” Geralt observes pointedly. “No wall of it stands alone.”

“Levy whatever accusations you wish about the consistency of my _heart_ ,” Yennefer returns, “But my _person_ is not made of fallible stone.”

He looks at her and she gentles, reaching out and allowing him to cup her face.

“I’m not supposed to look like this,” she says suddenly.

Geralt withdraws. After a moment, he says conversationally, “Me neither.”

Yennefer is not what you’d call an ‘emotionally intelligent queen.’ Even so, she’s spent enough time forging smiles to know a façade of forced distance when she sees one. She examines the chiselled structure of Geralt’s face, the hard nose, the strong chin, the eyelids she knows hide a bright but unnatural stare. She creeps her hand toward him, but not all the way. “No transformation comes without cost. Parts of you are lost. Or stolen.”

“Hm."

"Do you ever look at the mirror and…”

“I don’t.”

“Sometimes it’s best not to see,” Yennefer agrees.

Geralt huffs amusement and cracks his eyes open to smile at her. “That’s a good way to die, Yen.”

There’s companionable silence for a while.

“Istredd,” Geralt says carefully.

“He loved me before I was beautiful.”

Geralt’s eyes flicker slightly to the right as he ponders this. Apparently he can’t come to a satisfactory conclusion, because he grunts, low and disgruntled, in his throat. “Do you think I only sleep with you because I find you beautiful?” he finally asks.

Yennefer resists a bizarre urge to laugh. “Yes.”

“I find you interesting,” he says, as if offended she hadn’t come to that conclusion herself.

“If you’d seen what I was like before, you—”

“That’s not true,” Geralt cuts her off.

“ _Let me finish._ ”

Something in the room rattles. Geralt falls silent, cowed.

“If you knew what I was before, you’d _pity_ me.”

A brief flash of confusion surfaces on Geralt's face.

“Pity cannot coexist with love,” Yennefer goes on. “They run in the same channel. Nobody, no matter how open-hearted, has space for both.”

She waits for Geralt to contradict her. He does not. Whatever warmth or tenderness she felt in her heart has calcified again.

“I want you to promise me one thing, Witcher. If you ever start to pity me, _leave_.”

*

Istredd thinks of Yennefer before he sleeps.

Yennefer, a deformed child; Yennefer, a quarter-elf; Yennefer, a sorceress who can have everything and everyone she wants by her side, at her feet, in her bed. Seven times, Istredd has sought to gain entrance to Aedirn. _To learn_ , he told Stregobor. To learn what happened to her. 

All mages of a certain calibre know the general whereabouts and whatabouts of their peers. It’s not magic; it’s more like extant peripheral vision, a Chaotic evolutionary boon. He knows, more or less, what happened to Yennefer of Vengerberg, Mage to King Virfiril of Aedirn. What he wants to know is what happened to the young woman with the crooked jaw and the twisted spine and the fearful violet eyes. The woman with the white daisy—still living, and clutched as if precious—in her fist.

Seven times, he’s sought her; seven times, he’s been repelled. It’s as much a shock to him as to her when she appears in his dream.

He sleeps, and he’s in the cavern beneath Aretuza. It’s coated in dirt now, darker and dingier than it was when last he saw it. Whatever torches flamed in their sconces have long since gone out, and even their smoke has dissipated. Somehow, Istredd knows that this is what the cavern looks like now: untended, uncleaned, left to rot bereft of respect or even the barest curiosities. The abandoned sight of it grieves him. Once again, the bones of the old Elves are buried; the stories they held go unwhispered and unborne. No footfalls land and echo across the ancient stones. No gentle hand wipes dust from the foreheads of the skulls, blessing them.

Sometimes he thinks he’s the only one who cares. Sometimes he _knows_ he is.

He looks up. Yennefer is standing in the middle of the room, tall and proud, derision and dark hair and a dress with a plunging neckline. She looks at him; her eyes widen, her lips part. Her first act is to start towards him, but she tempers the action with formidable speed. “Istredd,” she says, and it sounds almost like…

Regret. Or maybe relief.

And then, in the way of dreams, without any intermediary movement, they’re sitting side-by-side on a rock, sides touching, Yennefer with her head turned toward him and Istredd with his hand on her shoulder. He touches, reverently, the back of her neck, her spine, the rigid coil of new, hard muscles. He explores her the underside of her jaw with his thumb, documents all the changes in her. 

All the external ones, anyway. 

She arcs her neck as he touches her. Before, she’d moan and exhale and let her head down, drop it into his chest and let it stay there while he’d run his fingers through her hair. Here, she’s silent. As people do in dreams, she kisses him suddenly and without preamble, but her lips are new and perfect and it doesn’t feel the same. 

“Yennefer,” he murmurs, holding her face and pressing his forehead to hers, “Where have you been?”

Her face shuts down. The green on her eyelids hits him like a wall, and beneath them, her eyes are cunning and cutting. “Aedirn,” she says indifferently. They’re standing again, far apart, facing each other. Yennefer looks angry. Gorgeous and angry and hurt and… alone.

She looks fierce. She looks brittle. 

“Are you all right?” Istredd asks.

Something horrible and raw and _open_ breaks across Yennefer’s face. He sprints to her, catches her hands in his, supports her weight as finally lets herself sag, and God knows how long it’s been since she’s done that, and he holds her and she looks up at him and her eyes are now the same, as fearful and wide as they were the day he met her, and—

They’re kissing again, furious, Yennefer’s hands all over him, grinding him against her, pulling him flush and hot to her mouth, chest to breast and hip to hip. He slows her, gentles her, and she gasps angrily as he extricates his rear from her hand. For a moment, he thinks she’ll slap him, but the only indication of her anger is a twist of her mouth and the set of her jaw.

She never used to be so subtle.

“I’m sorry,” he says, not sure what he’s apologising for, hurt and confused and just as raw as she is. He keeps holding her.

“Do you love me?” she asks. 

“Yes,” he admits. Without hesitation. When she doesn’t move, he lets go of her.

She watches him take his hands from her arms and step back to a safe distance. “Why?” she asks, and he’s not sure if she’s asking why he loves her or why he’s backing away.

He doesn’t reply.

“I’ve found someone,” she says unnecessarily, and it’s almost too banal of a sentence to exist.

“I’m glad.”

“Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher.”

Of course Yennefer would have him.

Istredd nods formally. “I hope he satisfies you.”

“He will. Has,” she corrects. “I’m… he’s…” she gestures to the side and looks off there as if expecting the spectre of the broad white-haired man to manifest.

Istredd can draw lines between dots just fine. “As you dream, he’s beside you in bed, I suppose?”

Yennefer doesn’t reply.

“A man like that, I’m surprised he hasn’t left by now.” It comes out more bitterly than he’d anticipated. Yennefer notes his tone with an unkind smile.

“Be careful with him,” Istredd advises cautiously.

“Oh, I will.”

He continues to look at her, unable to stop a sense of freewheeling _loss_ from fanning through his stomach. 

After a moment, Yennefer shifts. “I’m strong enough to look after myself, you know,” she says with a hint of levity.

“You always have been.” He remembers the day she portalled in, already a channel for power beyond her wildest imaginings. He remembers how small she’d seemed, how scared she’d been, how slowly she’d come to trust him.

Yennefer looks behind her as if seeking an exit, then returns her gaze to Istridd’s face. “Why should I be careful,” she asks guardedly. “Do you know something?”

“Of Geralt of Rivia? No.”

“Well then.”

“But I know the nature of Witchers,” he continues, “And I know the nature of you.”

“Oh, do you?”

“Yes. Better than anyone.”

Her smile grows placid, as if she’s humouring him, and even that seems like a power-play.

“Brutality begets brutality,” he says at last. “And cruelty cruelty, and pain pain.”

Yennefer folds her hands. “And?”

“And you’ve had your share of all three.” After a moment, he adds, “As has the Witcher, I’m sure.”

“Mmm.”

Istridd chooses his next words very carefully, trapping Yennefer’s gaze with his own. “Someone standing on the same precipice as you cannot pull you back from the edge.”

Yennefer smiles broadly and tilts her head. She’s looking down on him, he realises. He chose knowledge over power, and Yennefer has…

She’s _diminished_ him.

“You think I’m on an edge?” she asks. She steps up to him, crowding him slightly. “I am on the edge of everything I ever _wanted_ , Istredd. I am happier now than I have ever been.”

“Is that true?”

She meets his gaze evenly, and this time it’s her who has trapped him. “Yes.”

“Go well, then, Yennefer.”

He collects himself and turns to go, then looks briefly back. He lets her see what his heart is telling her, lets it be written clear across his face. Briefly, her smile falters. He can practically hear her repeating his words in her mind. _Someone standing on the same precipice as you cannot pull you back from the edge._

“Find a friend, Yennefer,” he entreats her. “Find someone on solid ground.”

“I pity you,” Yennefer replies. “You never thought to rise above the ground.”

She looks about her, taking in the cavern—literally subterranean—and smirks. There is no sign of the affection she once had for the place; no moment of pause, no modicum of reverence. She waves her hand behind her, a clear dismissal as much as a cursory incantation. A portal takes shape and Istredd watches as Yennefer steps through it, turning her back and vanishing.

He wakes remembering nothing of the dream, but there’s a hollow feeling near his heart.

*

The blood from his heart pounds through his fingers and it says kill, kill, _kill_ the creatures, take your sword and look into their _eyes_ as you hack at them, watch them jerk and spurt blood and fall down choking. Humans have never given him anything but hatred. They declared him a monster and trained him to hunt like one; they were _pleased_ when he behaved like one. They looked upon him with disgust, trod on him, backhanded him, violated him, mutated him, splintered his hope and his heart piece by piece, giving him no choice but to grow back beastly. But he did not grow back beastly.

He can save an entire town. He’s strong enough.

He is a Witcher. He has an altered soul.

But he has a soul.

He wakes from dreams of Kaer Morhen, and once again, his eyes are gold. It means, among other things, Geralt of Rivia cannot heal.

**Author's Note:**

> maybe i ship yennefer/istredd and geralt/jaskier what of it


End file.
